


Sleeping, Waking

by skitzofreak



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, M/M, Nightmares, angsty, apparently I'm on a dream kick, but a little shippy, except Baze, mostly generic, mostly headcanons, runon sentences are my bane, sort of tangential to my inception fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 18:30:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11514999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak
Summary: The worst of their nights are like this.





	Sleeping, Waking

The worst of their nights are like this.

 

Jyn never dreams anything that she can put together into a coherent story later; her nightmares are bits and pieces, jagged glass fragments. She feels the scratch of her nails clawing against cold stone walls in a dark cave, hears the whine of blaster fire screaming just past her ear, smells the sharp copper tang of human blood, tastes the bile of bitter death on her tongue. (Jyn jerks awake, grasping for her weapons, reaching for safety. She does not cry out, does not cry at all, but her fingers clench around the knife hilt, dig into Cassian’s arm around her waist, and she catalogues all the sensations she feels _now_ , here, where she is safe, where she is not alone.)

 

Cassian’s nightmare repeats; he moves through endless streets crowded with masked people, and the masks are of people he has known, people he has lost, people he has killed, people he has loved, and they whisper words that he can never quite hear. Sometimes he pushes his way through as if he can escape.  Sometimes he fights and smashes at the masks, trying to shatter the empty eyes because even the void behind the masks is better than the emotionless stares. Sometimes, worst of all, he does nothing, simply walks through the crowds until his own face is just as false and hollow as all the rest. (Cassian snaps awake without moving a muscle, going from the stillness of sleep to the stillness of waiting in a heartbeat. Somehow, the unnatural immobility always wakes her, and Cassian has not yet told Jyn how her hands on his face always ground him, remind him that he is still living flesh and not dead plastic, motionless, impassive, empty.)

 

Bodhi sleeps like he’s trying to escape it, thrashing and muttering. His shaking hands fumble and grasp at raindrops and handfuls of white sand that slide through his desperate fingers like lost memories, like voices he used to know, like the dust of NiJedha. (Bodhi wakes with a wild flailing of limbs, smacking arms or legs or head or all of the above on the edges of the bed frame, on the wall behind him, on the cold floor, on any nearby surface, until he learns to sleep wrapped as tightly as he can in his blankets. He’s tired of having so many damn bruises.)

 

Chirrut’s nightmares are silent. He walks through the familiar stone halls of the Temple of Kyber, trailing clammy fingers over the delicate carvings studded with crystal and mosaic tiles, patterns he knows as well as he knows his own staff, his own robes, the dips and valleys of Baze’s face. But his steps make no sound, and no matter how he strains to hear it, no heavy tread follows behind. He cannot hear the other monks moving through the ancient halls, moving through the Force, moving at all. Perhaps they are not moving, perhaps there are no monks, perhaps there is no Temple, no Jedha, no Force, no – (Chirrut wakes with a shuddering gasp and outstretched hands, reaching, grasping, and Baze’s steady breath and tetchy grumbles are blessedly loud in Chirrut’s ears.)

 

K2SO does not sleep, and certainly does not do anything so ridiculously organic as _dream_ , but when he runs diagnostic subroutines during low power maintenance intervals, he runs precautionary, predictive scenarios wherein, potentially, Cassian comes to harm, Cassian dies, Cassian is captured, Cassian preforms recommended droid maintenance protocols that require a routine memory wipe. (The last is a ridiculous setup, a negligible probability, a pointless exercise; he deletes the offending scenario, again, and finds some other use for his time.)

 

Baze sleeps like a stone, one hand resting lightly on Chirrut’s back, and does not wake until he is roused.

 

 

 


End file.
